Fig. 8
From: Bio-accelerated weathering of ultramafic minerals with Gluconobacter oxydans
Process and genetic improvements reduce the amount of feedstock carbon needed to potentially sequester one CO2 molecule from 525 to 1. Increasing leaching time, pulp density, and reducing average particle sizes were able to reduce kseq (glucose carbon investment vs. carbon sequestration ratio) by several orders of magnitude. Increasing dunite pulp density from 1–10% had a larger impact in reducing kseq than increasing leaching time from 1 to 10 days. Combining the ΔpstS, P112:mdgh double mutant with high pulp densities and long leaching times resulted in a kseq value of 1 in three experiments (Col. 10–12). Leaching attempts #1–9 used DUN-1 and attempts #10–12 used DUN-3 with a particle size of less than 74 microns as the leaching substrate.
